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An in-depth TheBrain app-praisal !
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Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jul 6, 2014 at 11:35 AM
Excellent in-depth review of TheBrain!
I recently tried to move from an info management centered on TheBrain to one centered around OneNote, but couldn’t do it. OneNote, for all its great features, just was not as useful to me as TheBrain—mostly because of the way in which TheBrain makes information easy to find and relate. Of course, one thing that is easy to do is to link any thought to a section or a page in OneNote and vice versa, so the two make a nice system. But, for me, TheBrain is definitely the front end, the main dashboard. And, it should be said that such a system doesn’t translate when you sync brains between computers. (Any files embedded in the brain being sync’d will sync to the other computer, but any files external to the brain will not be.)
Another nice touch, when you open the dialog box to create a new thought, it behaves much the way Notational Velocity and its clones work… it immediately searches for existing thoughts and presents options, should you want to link to one of these, or it lets you create a new thought. The search box works the same way.
To get the most from TheBrain, though, you need to constantly “garden” your data. (Garden is the term the developers use.) That is, you need to prune it and trim it and replant it to keep it from overgrowing in some areas… think of some thoughts as weeds that may need to be removed from time to time. I guess what I mean is you need to keep grooming your information in order to stay in control. This is a good thing, though, as it makes me continually reflect on my information.
Finally, it is way too limiting to think of TheBrain as a mind map. (Sadly, the developers contribute to this misconception by so often comparing TheBrain to mind mappers.) Yes, you can do mind mapping (if you use that term in a more generalized way) in TheBrain. I think of each brain as a galaxy of information that matters to me, and each thought then becomes its own little solar system, with related information orbiting around it. Unlike our solar system, however, it is constantly evolving and accreting data. (Okay, I’ve mixed metaphors, shifting from garden to galaxy, but they are both useful images.)
Steve Z.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jul 6, 2014 at 12:34 PM
Hugh wrote:
>As a mindmap/graphical outliner for articles, speeches, reports or the
>equivalent, there are other tools that will give you more than four
>“levels” in one view, and quickly deliver OPML output - neither of which
>as far as I can see The Brain can do.
That’s where the comparison with mind mappers leads to underestimating TheBrain, because I would agree it isn’t ideal for plotting out a speech or a paper. Where the mind map usually represents one particular project and the pieces that make it up, TheBrain doesn’t work that way, at least not optimally (though you can do that kind of work in TheBrain should you want to).
>
>Its strength seems to lie, as Paul Korm says, in knowledge management.
>But can it do more than DevonThink, say, with its “See also”
>functionality? I guess if you tend to visualise information, logical
>arguments and the relationships between ideas strictly in graphical
>terms, The Brain may be for you. But is a series of graphical links
>innately more powerful, memorable or expressive than, say, an indented
>list that also uses clones or replicants?
I certainly would not urge anyone who is satisfied with DevonThink to switch to TheBrain. For me, DT has never worked, even though I appreciate the number of great features. TheBrain is not my data dump (that’s Evernote for now). It’s my primary project dashboard and management system, so for me the comparison with DT isn’t even really appropriate. I can’t do that kind of work in DT or any other info manager that uses a hierarchy, because that is too structured for the way I think.
The best way for me to illustrate this is with the demonstration I put up on my blog three years ago (TheBrain has changed a lot since then):
http://welcometosherwood.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/personalbrain-as-a-management-tool/
Posted by Dr Andus
Jul 6, 2014 at 12:42 PM
Interesting review! In terms of categorising TheBrain, it sounds to me like it’s more of a graphical type of a desktop wiki, than a mind mapping software.
I find “mind mapping” a rather unhelpful category because it seems to be applied to two entirely different uses (which creates confusion).
Apps like Freeplane etc. effectively provide just another type of hierarchical outlining, and are more suited for working on individual documents, rather than serving as some sort of a database for everything that’s in one’s mind (even if that was possible). This category probably never should have been called “mind maps.” They are more like “thought maps”, in the sense that they pertain to single documents or other defined projects.
TheBrain might be more deserving of the “mind mapper” label, as it seems better suited for serving as a single database for all ideas and documents. However, since this label was hijacked by the previous category, it just creates confusion.
Given that TheBrain’s strengths seem to be in linking disparate info and then enabling their easy navigation and search, it sounds to me very much like a desktop wiki.
Posted by Dr Andus
Jul 6, 2014 at 12:48 PM
Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>That’s where the comparison with mind mappers leads to underestimating
>TheBrain, because I would agree it isn’t ideal for plotting out a speech
>or a paper. Where the mind map usually represents one particular project
>and the pieces that make it up, TheBrain doesn’t work that way
Oh, sorry Steve, I didn’t see your post before I posted mine. I was making a very similar point.
Posted by Paul Korm
Jul 6, 2014 at 01:25 PM
I use DEVONthink extensively, and I use TheBrain extensively. I suppose they both fit into a “knowledge management”—though that category is a bit like the proverbial nailing jello to a wall.
I integrate DEVONthink and TheBrain in several ways.
In DEVONthink, the results of just about any search or “See Also” display can be selected and exported as a group. I have an AppleScript of my own creation that will take any selection of documents and build an XML file using TheBrain’s DTD—when this “Brain XML” is imported as a child of a selected thought in TheBrain, I now have individual thoughts for each of the documents I selected in DEVONthink, with a link-back to that document. Click the link and the document opens in DEVONthink. So, I can do my research, note taking / annotation in DEVONthink, get to a point where I want to link specific results or suggestions from DEVONthink’s AI to one or more thoughts in TheBrain, and with a click on the menubar in DEVONthink I’m good to go. I find this to be a very flexible procedure that makes good use of the strengths of both products.
(The script is probably posted somewhere in the depths of DEVONthink’s forum—it’s in a horrible state, today, from a development perspective—good enough for me; confusing for anyone else—and needs to be ported to a different language. I might make a SWIFT version of it when Yosemite comes along in its public release.)